


we stood in perfect dread

by varlovian



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Rituals, Self-Sacrifice, Temporary Character Death, Treasure Hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 15:10:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8018812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/varlovian/pseuds/varlovian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>Something in him shattered at the sight—Jack’s face, relaxed and deathly still, every bit the man he remembered and lost.</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>They'd saved the world, but at what cost?</p>
            </blockquote>





	we stood in perfect dread

**Author's Note:**

> This drabble is entirely unbeta'd, so any spelling, grammar or tense errors are mine alone.

The cavern was cold and silent, empty bar two small figures on the raised dais in the center.

Gabriel’s breath carried in the air in front of him, frost-white and translucent, as if curling at the edges. He watched it dissipate into nothing, wishing it could take the heaviness in his chest with him and knowing all too well that it would not.

Fresh tears prickled at the corners of his eyes and assimilated themselves into the tracks of those already fallen, their heat biting at his deep, dark skin. He felt so useless in that moment, sprawled on his hands and knees at the heart of a thousand-year-old temple, crying over a dead man. Something in him had shattered at the sight of Jack’s face, relaxed and deathly still, every bit the man he remembered... and lost.

And now it was too late. There was no more time left to make his apologies, except to a corpse.

Jack had belied his order, rushed head-long into the chamber, offered up _himself_ as the sacrifice, and in doing so sealed both their fates—one to death, the other to a life of anguish and regret.

The cradle wouldn’t even release his body. Gabriel couldn’t see in past the small, rectangular hole that showcased Jack’s slack face. There were no markings on the frame, nor on the dais beneath it; no indication of a catch that might open the cradle, a mechanism that would allow him to, at the very least, bring his friend home.

There was nothing, only emptiness and cold and the hushed, withdrawn sound of Gabriel’s sigh as his eyes fell closed, forehead coming to rest on the stone cradle, frigid against his skin.

“Damn it, Jack. I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

Silence swallowed the words as effortlessly as the cold had leeched away the warmth in his cheeks and the feeling in his toes. Gabriel stayed there for what felt like eons—mere minutes in reality—trying to gather some semblance of calm to make the return trek.

He and the rest of the world was safe.

Because of Jack, and his sacrifice.

“Gabe?”

He gritted his teeth, ground his head into the stone and pleaded to a god he barely believed in to just _stop this_ already. Stop torturing him with the sound of Jack’s voice, speaking his name in hushed tones.

_“Gabe.”_

Again.

“Stop it,” he muttered. “Please just _stop_.”

“Fine,” came the reply, the harsh edges of the word softened by exhaustion, the bone-deep kind that Gabriel knew all too well. He chanced a look up, realizing at once that if he was wrong—if this wasn’t what he’d hoped—it would break him all over again.

He didn’t break.

Jack’s eyes were twin slits in the clammy setting of his face, lids heavy, face lined with pain but _alive._ Gabriel’s heart began beating rabbit-fast in his chest, a cacophony of sound that ricocheted through his head and his ears until he was all but vibrating with it.

“You,” Gabriel rasped, unable to string his thoughts together. The corner of Jack’s mouth twitched into a facsimile of a smile, tired and worn, and he knew exactly how he was going to finish the sentence now—“You _idiot._ ”

Jack groaned, pushing flat against the cradle he was still trapped within, exasperated. “Gabriel.”

“Don’t give me that,” Gabriel snapped. “What the _hell_ were you thinking, running in there like that?”

“There was no time,” Jack said. He waited for him to elaborate further but Jack’s focus was splintered, his shoulders shifting as his hands roved the inside of the small, tight box surrounding him, until finally they caught on a small hole cut into the side, in which he found the release.

Jack stabbed it with a finger and the mechanism built within the cradle came to life in an instant, it’s top splitting into two halves that first went up then out, like stone wings at either side of him.

Gabriel fell back to Jack’s side, and though he was still far from okay with this whole situation, he reached out his hand. Jack grasped his forearm. Together, they levered him up and out onto the platform, where Jack immediately crumpled, spent, beside Gabriel, face flushed despite the cold.

“Gabe,” Jack began, “I—”

“Were you afraid?” Gabriel blurted, looking straight ahead to where the cavern spread out before them, refusing to meet Jack’s eyes. He traced their return path instead, the rung-ladders and cage traps waiting for them on the other side of the door.

He heard Jack swallow, then he said, “Yeah, I was. But I knew I had to do it. You—you have a _family,_ Gabe, your grandma and you’re sisters. I don’t have that, at least not anymore.”

_No one would miss me._

Jack didn’t say the words. He didn’t need to. They hung heavy in the space between them all the same.

“You have me, asshole,” Gabriel snapped back, but there was no heat to it. How could there be, after a revelation like that? “Did you even stop to think what it would do to me if you _died_?”

Jack turned to face him, anger sparking in his eyes. “If I hadn’t, we’d _all_ be dead!”

“I don’t care!" he yelled. Surprise undulated across Jack’s face like a wave and he opened his mouth to speak, only Gabriel got their first, repeating, “I don’t care.”

And he didn’t. Not there, in that moment, or even right before, when the arms of the cradle had taken Jack into their grasp and sent a burst of light cascading through the cavern, illuminating every corner of the super-massive space, impossibly bright. He hadn’t cared then, either. Let them burn, he’d thought. Let them all burn, because it had to be better than this. And now?

He looked at Jack, at the lines and planes of his face, chest heaving and breath pluming in the air in front of him, and he still didn’t care. He’d almost lost him, and the _almost_ part hadn’t entirely seeped in just yet. He reached out, as if to make sure he was real and not some fever-dream brought on by the cold, taunting him with what he couldn’t have, and felt only coarse fabric and Jack’s solid frame beneath. The shirt was damp from dirt and sweat, torn in places from the perilous climb down the side of the mountain, through the jungle and into the heart of the dead city where now they sat. Gabriel didn’t care. It was here, it was real. _He_ was real.

For his part, Jack remained silent and still, eyes fixated on Gabriel’s face, as if waiting for something to happen. Gabriel’s fingers curled under the shirt, brushing the skin beneath, which was warm to the touch. Jack’s muscles rippled beneath his hand, reacting to the stimuli, and he drew in a sharp breath.

Absently, Gabriel said, “I know it’s selfish, and maybe it’s the fact that we just saved it, but I really don’t care about the world right now, Jack.”

Jack’s voice, when he spoke, was hoarse.

“What _do_ you care about, then?”

Gabriel averted his eyes from his hand, flat against the other man’s side, to Jack’s face.

He smiled at what he saw.

“I thought you were smarter than that, Jack,” he teased. “Six years at Trinity College for nothing?”

“I studied ancient history, as you well know. Not psychology,” Jack said, exasperated, but the corners of his mouth twitched into a smile. He still didn’t move from beneath Gabriel’s hand.

Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up. “And in all your studies, you never learned about love?”

“Is that what this is?” Jack shot back, watching the line of his lips. “Love?”

Gabriel sobered and the air shifted between them. “You know that phrase, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’?” Jack nodded. “You were gone, Jack, and then I knew.” They looked at each other for a long moment, and then he grinned. “So yeah, idiot, it’s love.”

Jack grinned back, and continued to grin even as Gabriel kissed him, which kind of ruined the moment, until Gabriel jammed his finger into Jack’s side and he jolted, mouth slackening, and everything became slick and hot between them. Jack groaned, hand clasping the back of Gabriel’s head, twisting in the fine hair there. Gabriel kissed him like a man drowning, and perhaps he was. Perhaps they both were.

When they parted, Jack licked his lips, looking about ready to go again. He stopped at the look in Gabriel’s eyes, the sudden light skittering across the darkness.

“What is it?” he asked, not particularly concerned but curious as to what the other was thinking.

Gabriel was just as learned, just as brilliant as Jack was, if not more so; his mind made leaps that made other people’s heads spin. So it didn’t surprise him when Gabriel’s next words were lightyears ahead of Jack’s own thoughts. It just pleased him, like it always did.

“We just saved the fucking world, Jack,” Gabriel said, breathlessly.

Jack smiled. “We did, didn’t we?”

It would be a long, arduous trek back through the cave system, out of the city and into the jungle proper. It would be hours before their ground team picked them up at the rendezvous point, some three klicks away where the foliage thinned just enough to squeeze the jet through.

But all of that would come later. For now, there was this:

Two tiny figures in an ancient, subterranean cavern, clinging together on the raised, stone dais, kissing like they’d invented it, riding the high of their victory against an ancient, unspoken threat.

And they were brilliant.

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> The title references a quote from the Welcome to Night Vale podcast: _"...the city stood, and Janice stood, in perfect dread."_
> 
> This drabble was inspired by the closing parts of Matthew Reilly's Seven Ancient Wonders, which is getting it's third sequel next month. If you love treasure hunting, a multi-ethnic cast, team feels and heroes named Jack, check it out. It's like a comic book in writing—fast and flashy and fun. I hope I captured some of that here.
> 
> Any and all comments and kudos are, as always, greatly appreciated.


End file.
